“For just as a little wine becomes an opportunity for the drunkard to drink some more, so also the newly rich, after they have acquired much, desire even more.”

—St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

“When will you use the things you already have?  When will you ever be able to enjoy them, since you suffer constantly from the pains of acquisition?”

—St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

He was made miserable by abundance, wretched by the good things he possessed, and still more wretched by the good things he still expected to receive.

—St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

Things which have most hold on us, as the concealment of our few possessions, are often a mere nothing.  It is a nothing which our imagination magnifies into a mountain.  Another turn of the imagination would make us discover without difficulty.

—Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“If you lose something, be grateful. The loss frees you from care.”

—Abba Euprepius

Identify things you do not really need. Seek a smaller house rather than a large one. Identify at least one activity that you can withdraw from to make more free time in your life. Identify one relationship you need to sever.

Anxiety and the Simple Life
Fr Dn Charles Joiner

“I never wanted to have anything in my life that I couldn’t stand losing.”

—Audrey Niffenegger

“How much happier is the man who owes nothing to anybody except the one he can most easily refuse, himself!”

—Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

“If anyone thinks he is without attachment to some object, but is grieved at its loss, then he is completely deceiving himself.”

—St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

“The less I needed, the better I felt.”

—Charles Bukowski